


Redeemer

by meltokio



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabble Collection, Faithful Trevelyan, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meltokio/pseuds/meltokio
Summary: A collection of drabbles and prompts for Evelyn Trevelyan, faithful rogue Inquisitor.





	1. Ritual

It takes weeks to orchestrate the ritual. Gathering materials, perusing ancient tomes caked in dust, steeling resolves and mouthing last-minute prayers. If all goes according to plan, the man who sparked the mage rebellion will be the first to reverse the process of inviting a spirit to inhabit his body. Knowledge from the Seekers’ tome, Grey Warden artifacts, and a line of hushed questioning from Grand Enchanter Fiona have brought them here, in the barren wastes of the Exalted Plains, to see history made.

Anders looks every bit the martyr. Hollowed cheeks and shadowed eyes. Mouth set in a grim line. His beard has grown, golden bristles that catch unforgiving sunlight. The Inquisitor can see, beyond the sharp features and sullen stares, what many would find handsome.

He kneels in the sacred circle, uneasily, and looks skyward. The Herald wonders if he’s beseeching the Maker or cursing Him. As the air charges with ancient, archaic magicks, she raises her hand briefly. The mages of the Inquisition pause, lowering their staffs, and bear witness as she picks her way carefully through the brush and the stone, setting foot in a space both sacred and profane. She watches his eyes open and close, eyes golden against blue and purple bruises beneath them. She takes his face in her hands, gently, her thumbs at his stubbled jaw. She brushes her lips against each sharp cheekbone, a final measure of luck and gratitude and forgiveness.

Andraste’s chosen steps out of the circle, and the ritual commences. She finds her hands clasped in secret, silent prayer.


	2. Piety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No wonder they flock to you. You’re the spitting image of Andraste on the pyre.”

“Your Worship, your brother is without.” An elven serving girl, from an Alienage destroyed in the Mage Rebellion. She goes by a name the Inquisitor can’t quite remember. Some sort of flower—or an herb. _Amaryllis? Yes, that’s it._

She puts down her looking glass and stands slowly from her desk, bracing herself on the surface. She should have known this would happen; one of them would want a private word, away from the eyes and ears of the Inquisition. They would make her be honest. They would pry the details from her, willing or not.

She’d sooner face Corypheus again.

“Send him in, please.”

She had not expected Nealon to break propriety, nor would Ewan venture far from the library while he was here. Who else but Wallace, of the solemn eyes and easy grin? The most charming. The most handsome. The bane of noble fathers and the blessing of their noble daughters. He has their father’s solid shoulders and their mother’s sculpted features. He walks with the gait of a man who hears applause with each step.

“You’ve done quite well for yourself, sister.” He speaks to her but moves toward the balcony, sucking in a great breath of summer air. “Your name will echo throughout eternity.”

She permits herself a snort. “That was poetic.” That was Wallace. If he hadn’t looked like a maiden’s dream, he could simply use his words to woo whomever he chose.

“And true, nonetheless. How many have been chosen by _Andraste_?” He says the Prophet’s name with all the feigned awe he could muster.

She gives him no quarter. “Some would say none.”

He turns on her then, a shallow smile beneath brooding eyes of the same lagoon-blue as her own. “Look at you. Look at your hair!” He takes a piece from where it lay on her shoulder, twirling it twice around his finger. “No wonder they flock to you. You’re the spitting image of Andraste on the pyre.” And he tugs twice gently, like ringing a bell, before letting go. A gesture meant to hearken to a childhood spent with an affectionate brother. Evelyn can only recall him yanking her braid, mussing it up after their mother had just made it lovely.

Her words are as sour as her mood. “I cannot be. They have not lit the torches yet.”

His low, smooth laughter catches on the walls. “And with no Maferath stewing in jealousy at your side, I doubt they ever will.” Wallace props a hip against her desk, head cocked to the side and considering. “I doubt you’d let yourself be tied to any man, warlord or no. You are not the timid, meek little thing who left us all those years ago.”

She speaks to the mountains. Her voice is carried off on a crisp breeze. “I have been baptized in the æther. I’ve been born anew—”

“Now _that_ is poetic.” He gives her a brief, mocking round of applause. “Maker’s breath, do you hear yourself, Evie?”

It cannot be concern in his words. Not now. Not after she’s already won. Not when there was none to be found when she faced the darkness, uncertain, with only her faith to console her.

“Do not use that name anymore.”

Shapely arms cross over his chest as the brief moment of sincerity passes as quickly as it came. “Oh? And are you no longer Evelyn Trevelyan?”

She rounds on him with renewed spite, looking into her brother’s eyes for the first time since he stepped through the threshold. “I am a Trevelyan in name alone. I have brought pride and honor to a house with none left.” She knows her words are arrows tipped in venom, finding purchase judging by the way his face falls. “When Mother and Father carted me off to the Chantry I knew the coffers were made bare by Father’s indiscretions. How many bastards have been fed from our family’s gold?”

“You want me to count? We may he here a while.” It is his last ditch effort to keep the mood light.

The Inquisitor presses on, unmoved. “And have you followed in Father’s footsteps, Wallace?”

“I am smarter than Father,” he says, some fierceness alight in his eyes at last.

“And more charming by far. How many bastards have you got, dear brother? How many poor maids cry by night when they realize their love has forgotten them?”

“Enough, I’m sure. But I’ve never given anyone a child.” He takes some measure of pride in this. It makes her ill, to see him grasping at this lowly, crude honor.

“I suppose there is hope for you after all.”

“Your Worship’s grace is legendary.” He exhales, the fight having been blown out as easily as a candle. His silence is his surrender.

For a long, painful moment they exist together, each aware but ignoring the other. The Inquisitor stares hard at the paperwork on her desk; numbers and missives and reports to mull over. Wallace looks out onto the peaks and valleys, past the white-capped points of the mountaintops and out onto the blanket of stars. They are brighter here, where the clouds don’t hide them. She’d never seen so many stars in Ostwick.

She’d never seen much of anything in Ostwick. She’d never had the chance.

Her fist clenches of its own accord, fingers covering and closing around the garish green scar in her palm. “I’m sure all this weighed heavy on them. Mother and Father. The girl they sold into Chantry servitude for a pat on the head won a holy war.”

Wallace doesn’t answer, indeed he seems as if he hasn’t heard her. When he does speak, he does not speak to her. “You’re not wrong. They were up all nights, sick with grief when they’d heard about what happened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.” When he turns to her there is an earnestness in his face that she’s never seen before. “They love you, sister. They might not have shown it when you were with us, but they missed you when you were gone. And so did we. We may be fools, without honor or dignity but we are not heartless.” A hand goes to her cheek, a show of fraternal affection he’d never shown her before. “You were the kindest and the gentlest of us. Mother doted on you as much as she could. Even Father treasured you. But you were too young to see it. You didn’t have enough time.”

Her eyes sting with tears she is too proud to shed. “I was ten years old.”

“Too young. And the gentleness has gone out of you.” He drops his hand back to his side, as if he’s lost her again.

She swallows thickly and moves for the door, disregarding the cosmetics she’d meant to apply when she entered. “I must be getting back.”

He has the audacity to appear offended. “Am I being dismissed?”

“Yes.”

He takes the space of a breath to concede, begrudgingly. “Fine.” Wallace walks to the stairs but stops at the door. “We thought you were dead, Evelyn. Mother was…. She was inconsolable. She lay abed all day. Wouldn’t eat. Woke up crying the few nights she slept. I’ve never seen Father so angry. At himself. At us. We sent you there. We sent you to your death to further our own ambitions. I’m not suggesting we deserve your forgiveness, but if you can find it in your heart…. ”

The words die in her throat as a fist closes tight around her heart. She grits her teeth and breathes. She will not cry. She must not cry. She is not Evie, ten and tearful, clutching at her mother’s skirts in front of the Ostwick Chantry. She is the Inquisitor. The Herald of Andraste. The face of holy truth and divine retribution.

Her answer is steely and quiet, a slip of a dagger between silk. “Tell Mother I’ll save her a seat beside me for the joust tomorrow.”

A slow, sweet smile spreads over handsome features. “Thank you.” He looks at her for a moment, opens his mouth, then decides better of it, retreating back to the sounds and smells of the feast below.


End file.
